Red Lobster is going upscale (sort of)

Thanks to years’ worth of commercials celebrating its suspiciously dirt-cheap seafood platters, Red Lobster has become known as the kind of restaurant whose food should probably be approached with some degree of caution. Now, someone’s trying to change that. The seafood chain was recently offloaded by its parent company and acquired by a San Francisco investment firm for $1.5 billion. According to The Associated Press, Red Lobster’s new CEO, Kim Lopdrup, has made it his mission to totally change everyone’s perceptions about the quality of the chain’s food. Rather than making any hasty menu revisions, though, Lopdrup is banking on visual cues to sway public opinion. For instance, the plates used going forward will be circular instead of rectangular, and tilapia filets will be draped dramatically over the rice pilaf, rather than laid out flat next to it. Going forward, Lopdrup also plans to ditch some of Red Lobster’s more extravagant discounts, keeping only the sensible, classy ones, like “Endless Shrimp” for $15.